Researchers from the Faculty of Physics of the University of Warsaw (UW) in cooperation with the Mathematics Department of the University of Suzhou in China, using photosensitive elastomer technology, have built a microrobot that mimics the movement of the snail.

A 10-millimeter-long robot, driven and controlled by a modulated laser beam, can move on a flat surface, climb a vertical wall and crawl on a glass ceiling.

Research on soft micro-robots and polymeric implementation mechanisms are financed by the National Science Center as part of the project “Executive mechanisms in micro-scale based on photo-responsive polymers” and by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education under the “Diamond Grant” awarded to Mikołaj Rogóż from the UW.